just a little history there

i do remember the time my grandmother sat on a copy of time magazine on top of the plastic wrapped living room couch and the photo melded permanently with the plastic, and using windex to clean it and scrape it off only turned the plastic yellow

if_i_only_had_a_heart

raincoaster

+ Watch video

Hez

"Sci Fi (seriously, first time watching that channel)"

Oh, look, Muffy. A new fresh one! All together -

"We represent the Lollipop Guild ..."

Rooo sez BISH PLZ

Bons rêves! Thanks for a fun night! And you too, fair Spiegelhost.

BeRightBack

I'm a bit jealous that you get to deal with that kind of stuff at work. And I dig that you get excited about it, because as evidenced, I'm obsessed.

As for this translation, I can't help but be enamored. It's printed facing the original text so you can compare line by line, and I appreciate that but it's also been distracting because it's impossible not to be aware of how far his choices are from the literal. My verdict so far, however, is that he isn't just "faithful to the spirit," he's devoted to the meaning on both macro and micro levels. I don't have a clue how you organize an endeavor like this, but he did it and it comes out as effortless as the odes to my aqua-blue eraser that I wrote when I was in first grade.

The one annoying thing about the book (hardcover) is that it's printed with those pages that have edges that aren't all even, like ye olde bookes. Totally unnecessary and drives me batty.

Zorica

dollywould

As for the star, I did not even see it until you mentioned it so I can't call you out on your powers of observation (obvi they are better than mine). But I feel all twinkly now! And it's not just the aerated chocolate and pinot noir, for once.

Zorica

BeRightBack

--it looks a wild place:
no sign of a settlement anywhere to be seen
but heady heights to both halves of the valley
and set with saber-toothed stones of such sharpness
no cloud in the sky could escape unscratched.
He stalls and halts, holds the horse still,
glances side to side to glimpse the green chapel
but sees no such thing, which he thinks is strange,
except at mid-distance what might be a mound,
a sort of bald knoll on the bank of a brook
where fell water surged with frenzied force,
bursting with bubbles as if it had boiled.
He heels the horse, heads for that mound,
grounds himself gracefully and tethers Gringolet,
looping the reins to the limb of a lime.
Then he strides forwards and circles the feature,
baffled as to what that bizarre hill could be:
it had a hole at one end and at either side,
and its wall, matted with weeds and moss,
enclosed a cavity, like a kind of old cave
or crevice in the crag--it was all too unclear to
declare.
"Green Church?" chunters the knight.
"More like the devil's lair
where, at the nub of night,
he makes his morning prayer."

"For certain," he says, "this is a soulless spot,
a ghostly cathedral overgrown with grass,
the kind of kirk where that camouflaged man
might deal in devilment and all things dark.
My five senses inform me that Satan himself
has tricked me in this tryst, intending to destroy me.
This is a haunted house--may it go to hell.
I never came across a church so cursed."

Please forgive my further indulge of the fetish (courtesy of Simon Armitage's new translation, with which I am very much still in the honeymoon phase, forgiving all of its loose morals and captivating eccentricities). It's all I can do to keep from transcribing the entire of Fitt IV, not to mention excerpting all the parts where it talks about "how lords have laid down their lives for love,/endured for many days love's dreadful ordeal,/then vented their feelings with avenging valor/by bringing great bliss to a lady's bedroom--"

Zorica

Marion: Waddaya want?

Nazi: The same thing Herr Doktor Jones wanted. Surely he told you there would be other interested parties?

Marion: {lighting a cigarette} Musta slipped his mind.

Nazi: The man is - NEFARIOUS.

Some of the best damned script wirting of the late 20th century, right there.

BaconCat

SO FUCKING WHAT!

sailor

ellagood

ian spiegelman

See you at the theater.

In Other News...

But wait....isn't that star I see new? Or am I just inobservant? Anyway, love the new look!

And don't take this the wrong way, but your pointe-shoes-on-everything mania reminded me of one of my favourite "Jean Teasdale" columns from The Onion, when she dressed up the neighbor's baby as a clown: [www.theonion.com]

BeRightBack

Never defended Time, only as a direct comparison with People.

And Ebert's a nice man, but I wouldn't put my last dollar on his review.

sailor

I can't pretend to remember the last scene as much as the rest... I know he doesn't get his head cut off... But mostly I remember all the naughty garter bits.

ian spiegelman

Re: your reaction to Episode I, I am starting to worry that I might have done that, just a little bit, for Iron Man. Only time will tell. I definitely did that for Pirates III and have since been greatly saddened by the memory.

Oh, adrenaline! That's actually a good segue into chatter about Gawain. The bedroom parts are totally rad. And this is idiotic but I really, really love the color green, and you can feel that color so strongly in the final scene.

Zorica

Thanks for the push, action was overdue.

Zorica

Zorica

Sir Gawain is such a great, dirty story.

@BeRightBack: If I had had to review Episode I within two weeks of seeing, I would have given it four stars. I was an intern at New York mag when it came out and the exec ed gave me his pass to the week-early premiere screening. I was so psyched I couldn't really allow myself to believe that it was sucking. On the subway ride home, my brain tried to force me to acknowledge that it sucked, and I gave it such a beating that it shut the ef up and I told all my friends it was awesome and organized a trip for like 15 of us to see it at Midnight opening day.

ian spiegelman

Zorica

jackvinyl

BeRightBack

Zorica

rosaluxembourgeoise

Midwesterner in NYC

Zorica

hummingpenguin

Zorica

BeRightBack

I wrote my senior thesis on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Kind of like preparing for a career as a clown by running a marathon. Ah, my salad days!

Zorica

Midwesterner in NYC

BeRightBack

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Say it aloud. The very title causes the pulse to quicken, if you, like me, are a lover of pulp fiction. What I want is goofy action--lots of it. I want man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales, plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys."

ian spiegelman

Midwesterner in NYC

BeRightBack

The word "schadenfreude" has been popping up this weekend, and I suppose I experience just a bit of that on the professional level, knowing that this kind of thing goes on in the esteemed and lofty field of letters same as it does in more "superficial" places, including the ones where I work. It's almost some kind of comfort. Every field has its showmen, running their three ring circuses, singing "Razzle Dazzle" from Chicago, bribing the judge and distracting the jury from the evidence. Getting lost in their wake stings a little less knowing that it's not only my own game that's fucked up.

As my old battle-ax of a coach would say, "Bullshit artists are everywhere. They're grabby and they win regularly. Get over it."

As for my leggacies, *blush* you noticed! I'm kind of surprised you can even tell what they are, they get so small in avatar form.

Zorica

sailor

ian spiegelman

ian spiegelman

When I consider it rationally, there's lots of Real Journalism going on there that you don't get in People. But more and more (is this me maturing or the magazine changing? I hesitate to say) I see pieces that are more charts than words, and on topics that seem ever more novel and ever less likely to make me not just think, but really question something.

I suppose Time has a reputation for taking itself seriously, and that's a dangerous thing to do in the current climate. Exhibit A: the flowering of Gawker.

As much as I love the snark, I wouldn't be sad for something else to eventually supersede it. Lately I've been drifting away from the Oscar Wilde and towards the Emily Dickinson. Yearning for sincerity? Just a bit.

Zorica

Uhh, that was pretty vitriolic. Know that none of it was directed at you, my beautiful, newly befooted Zorica! I just hate that Frey has successfully parlayed his notoriety into some kind of "literary outlaw" status that has blinded many to the fact that he's just a terrible writer, both as a memoirist and novelist.

BeRightBack

ian spiegelman

Easy, Ian. Not taunting you at all. Instead I comment mostly on the weekends because of you. I simply questioned Time as an authority on films.

Peace, my brother.

sailor

ian spiegelman

As for Time being the source, I was skeptical as well. I had heard that the latest James Frey book I haven't read got a good review out of them, but then I actually read the review and it was more of a "not as bad as you'd think" review, and said something about the worst parts being the worst thing you'll read all year . . . now not that this was the same critic, so comparing it is totally invalid (isn't it) but since I can't decide whether we are supposed to hate on Frey forever and ever amen for breaking the suspension of not-disbelief or whether we are supposed to give this book a chance, I have no sense of whether I ought to call bullshit on that review and the ship whose colors it flies. And that makes me very unsure of how much I can trust that they won't try to snow me regarding a movie that I really want to be good but am afraid will not be good. What is their agenda? How could they possibly not have one?

Zorica

ian spiegelman

I'll keep watching the marthon of the first three on Sci Fi (seriously, first time watching that channel).

ZiggyStardust

sailor

Mike_Jahn

1. Always beware of posts with a few comments.

2. Time magazine?

sailor

ShoplifterOfTheWorld

Damn!

Mike_Jahn

thanks ian!

bess marvin, girl detective

pureblarney